Frank commentary from a retired call girl

Return of the Agitator

If American sheriffs had the humor, wisdom, and modesty of Sheriff Andy Taylor; if their deputies were allotted one bullet which had to be carried in a pocket; this site would be unnecessary. – Patrick from Popehat

…portraying Rodney King as a hero, or as a villain, plays into the central narrative of our criminal justice system, one that offers the ultimate excuse for cutting corners, giving police the benefit of the doubt, looking the other way at constitutional violations, putting our thumbs on the state’s end of the scales of justice. He got what he deserved — that’s what one side says, cutting through facts and law and reasoned analysis to pure us vs. them. He didn’t deserve that, says the other side, unwittingly lending support to the implicit argument that there are some who do. But deserve’s got nothing to do with it. Heroism and villainy have nothing to do with it. We have to demand that everyone be treated justly, whether our viscera tell us that they do not deserve the rule of law at all. Rodney King should have been spared excessive force not because he’d earned respite, but because we extend it to everyone…because it’s…foolish and perilous to let the state (or the mob) decide who deserves rights and who doesn’t…

On Tuesday I published “By Any Other Name”, a composite essay drawn from several previous columns on this site about terms for hookers and when it’s appropriate to use them; I also cross-posted my Friday the 13th column and a whole lot of links:

27 Responses

Balko does an excellent job of reporting corruption by authorities, but at the same time he supports the Citizens United ruling, which is one of the most destructive and un-Constitutional rulings to come out of the Supreme Court since they “ruled” that Bush was president.

The ruling effectively states that money is equivalent to speech, which effectively strips people without money of their free speech rights. Un-Constitutional.

See, this is why I can’t accept Libertarianism. It criticizes government while giving tyranny by private entities a free pass.

Gore was no more “valid” as a “winner” of that election than Bush was. It’s been long known that the nation elects based on the electoral college and not popular vote. Love it or hate it – that’s the rules and you can’t complain about the rules after the fact. Change the rule first.

In this society money IS speech. If I want to tell Americans how shitty a candidate is – I can’t do it without money. Sure, I can write a blog that no one will read – or I can go out and use my earned money – or the money freely given to me by others – to produce a media campaign that touches everyone.

The ruling doesn’t strip anyone of free speech rights. What liberals don’t like – is the fact that now UNIONS have competition in the “speech” market from people with more mainstream, less marxist views – and they’re pissed about it.

Libertarianism doesn’t overlook private tyranny but insists that it be punished in accordance with the law. Buying commercial time isn’t a tyranny – because everyone out there should be a THINKING individual who’s mind is persuaded by facts – not flashy ads. It’s not our job to police how people think and it’s not yours either. It’s not your job to control the messages that people see and attempting to do so is, in itself, a tyranny.

Legitimate unions are made up of workers who choose to be a part of that union. If you don’t like unions, you simply choose not to join one, so your point about unions is rather moot. Unions are made up of workers, not “liberals”.

What Citizens United has done is has made money equivalent to speech, which was never the intention of the Founding Fathers.

Then there are a lot of “illegitimate” unions out there, Susan. You do know that under Wagner and Davis-Bacon there are compulsory aspects to unionization? And that some locales and states mandate “closed shop” unionism?

And in regard to Krulac’s point: take a look at the political breakdown of union contributions by political spectrum. He’s right that the Left is losing their lock on public discourse and that it pisses them off.

Engaging in speech does not tyranny make. Foreclosing the means to do so does. Your argument here sounds a lot like the one detailed by Orwell in “1984.” “War is Peace.” “Freedom is Slavery.” And, apparently, “Free Speech is Censorship.”

Krulac,
But if you accept money from other people to defray the costs of setting up that blog, you would fall under electoral regulations. There is a case going on in Colorado right now over that very issue. A couple of people wrote an opinion piece and took contributions to see it published – on the internet on a new blog. They had to stop taking contributions toward that end because the Secretary of State’s office wasn’t sure if it was covered by the electoral laws and the manager of the site was fined $50.00 for not making a reporting deadline. (This was on contributions that had only amounted to $200.00 at the time.)

The fact is, as Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven pointed out in “Take back your government,” the electoral and contribution rules that came out of the Watergate era actually decreased the amount of citizen participation in the civic square even though the reason given for those reforms was to increase participation.

But here’s the thing. When you require people to hire lawyers to insure compliance with regulations and laws (by multiplying the same beyond reason) you always give a direct advantage to the larger organizations. They can more easily absorb the cost than the smaller ones. This is true of businesses, non-profits, and even political action committees. And while the more gov’t types always say they want more citizen and grassroots participation, the “unintended” consequences of their every move gives them the lie.

Unions faced a lot of competition before citizens united and weren’t by no means the biggest player.

Plus, advocating is what unions do, so supporting public policies is much closer to their purpose, while a corporation exists for another purpose, making money.
So a corporation has an incentive to try to support public policy that would distort the market in their favor, while a union wouldn’t be able to do that, since everything they do gets applied to all workers.
I get the principle of the idea that a group of people should be able to give money to support their interests regardless of whether or not they are called a corporation or union.
However, I’m not sure in a libertarian society, citizens united would have happened.
The reasoning of the decision seems rooted in the false dichotomy of our political system, where corporations are the Republican versions of the Democrat’s unions and stopping them from donating was forcing the Republicans to play with one less player.

“So a corporation has an incentive to try to support public policy that would distort the market in their favor, while a union wouldn’t be able to do that, since everything they do gets applied to all workers.”

Public sector unions were beyond the scope of my argument. Your example is unique because of the initial distortion was caused by the criminalization of consensual behavior, that that public union took advantage of.

I never said policies can’t be wrong, or make things worse. My point was that with a corporation with political power always has the temptation to cheat and use that political power to weaken the competition. Unions don’t compete against other entities.
They support bad policies sometimes, but they have much less of an incentive to support bad ideas that they know are bad for everything except for them.

Wrong. Unions are organized for the very purpose of excluding unorganized labor competition. Specifically, at their inception, minority workers. When Davis Bacon was floated, the Republicans noted it’s explicitly racist motivation; the Democrats responded that it was only protecting “local labor against migrant labor.” And of course, it was pure happenstance that the vast majority of migrant labor was non-white.

With the exception of the United Mine Workers of America, I don’t know of a single union coming out of the nineteenth century that was not explicitly racist in their founding. What Jim Crow was to blacks in the Old South, Union organization (and occupational licensing) was to blacks who migrated north. For a good look at this, including the union recruiting posters that explicitly targeted the n****r, find a copy of “The State Against Blacks,” By Walter Williams.

The UMWA specifically said in their charter that they would not so discriminate amongst their members.

but they have much less of an incentive to support bad ideas that they know are bad for everything except for them.

Wrong again. In just one example the minimum wage laws always impact minorities disproportionately. It limits job entry and therefore their learning of basic job skills among minority teenagers when the minimum wage is above the level of their productive rate of return.

This in turn disadvantages them for later jobs, leaving them further back in jobs skills than the others of their cohort. Which makes them, as unorganized workers, less of a competitive threat.

I agree that Lech Walesa and Solidarity were essential in bringing down the communist regime in Poland. I have a great deal of admiration for them and I’m not sure that I would have the guts to do what they did in the face of a totalitarian regime with its record of repression after it outlawed their union. An acquaintance of mine was helping smuggle computer equipment in to the country to help support the samizdat movement for the underground press and information. Since she was a foreigner, she wasn’t at the same level of risk as the people she was contacting, but some of her anecdotes were rather frightening, particularly the level and scope of violence that the police were willing to exert in looking for these underground presses and the people running them.

See, this is why I can’t accept Libertarianism. It criticizes government while giving tyranny by private entities a free pass.

You mean, like the tyranny of trade cartels (restaurant associations, taxicab commissions, etc) trying to suppress small businesses, or the tyranny of the for-profit prison complex, or the tyranny of lobbying, all of which Balko and other libertarians also oppose? Or were you thinking of different private entities?

Libertarians support applying rules equally, not just to certain groups a political party dislikes. They also support ALL civil rights, not just economic ones (like so-called conservatives) or just intellectual ones (like so-called liberals).

My mind isn’t made up about “Citizens United”, but your statement simply isn’t true; rich people and companies with lobbyists have been buying off politicians for at least 2500 years, and it will stay that way as long as governments are arranged to allow infinite re-election and the creation of one-sided laws.

If one argues that money should not be used in the pursuit of political speech, you essentially limit access to politicians to those they know personally; that is, the upper echelons of a society. The idea of banding together, pooling your money so that your speech may be heard by others is rendered illegal.

And while I support transparency in political contributions to political speech, it does have a downside.

Back in the 1980’s, there was recall effort directed at California’s Lieutenant Governor. The LTG used the contribution lists to target those people opposing him by specific regulatory actions by his cronies in the state government. When the group stopped collecting the information to protect their donors from this highly illegal gov’t action, the electoral committee, also cronies of said LTG then fined them an amount greater than all the funds they had collected.

The fact of the matter is that restrictions on speech are just that. And in some states you can’t even collect 200 dollars without having to hire a lawyer and register. That doesn’t even pay for hiring a meeting hall let alone a pot luck dinner.

While the opponents of free speech masquerade as champions of the same by arguing that “money is not speech,” I find it interesting that there is one class of corporations that they make no noise about whatsoever. Media corporations – except for “Faux” News because they are ideological fellow travelers. Talk about private tyranny. Look at the lock the Big 3 and NPR had on discourse from Secretary of Commerce Hoover’s establishment of the FRC until the repeal of the “Fairness Doctrine” in the 1980’s.

Well, as I pointed out in another comment today, I’m less worried about the money going to any one political candidate than the billions spent by the pharmaceutical and alcohol industries to shore up the “drug war” which has contributed more than any other single factor in turning a once-free country into a fascist police state.

A press is an expensive piece of equipment and running it requires ink, paper, and people. Citizens United just said that the First Amendment also covers DVD burners. The FA guarantees freedom of speech, petition, assembly, religion, and the press. Speech isn’t money but assembly, religion, and the press have always been money.

No, it was Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 which held that expenditure of money to influence an election was the equivalent of speech. Citizens United was about whether the congress could limit political speech by corporations and unions.

Maggie,
I have to say that the innocent woman who remained imprisoned due to bureaucratic indifference infuriates me. And I have to agree with the poster at the Agitator who said that those responsible should spend 53 days in solitary, forfeit their pay and have the equivalent assets that this woman lost confiscated and given to her in restitution. I’d say treble damages would be just about right.

This is what immunity buys us. Indifference to horrible outcomes under their control.

And it should go all the way up the chain of command. If the chief isn’t instructing staff not to arrest people who aren’t wanted and to check fingerprints with files, then he needs to be made an example of.

Wait, wait. That is a clear violation of that deputy’s right to self defense. (this is kinda for fun) And depriving the man of his second amendment rights was because he wasn’t mentally competent to carry out the duties of a deputy sheriff.
What we have here is a classic case of trying to use hardware to solve a software problem, much like the introduction of three round burst mechanism on the m16a2 in vietnam.
Every firearm, no matter how many arbitrary measures one places on them, is a dangerous tool that must be treated with respect and used responsibly. Every bullet fired has the potential to end someone’s life and only by knowing how to protect your life and the lives of those around you can that burden of power be managed.

Maggie on Twitter

Boring but necessary legal stuff

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